the great wave of TMI

This image is a classic wood block print from Japan illustrating both the horror and awesome beauty of nature. One the one hand, and on the other. You can see the wave from a distance and it looks normal until you see the scale of the boats and the size of Mount Fuji.

Noted author James Gleick has written a book about the history of information which suggests that we are facing a tsunami of useless information. The following is from a CNN interview on his book The Information:

When I started writing the book, seven years ago, the initials T.M.I. stood for "transmarginal inhibition" or "Texas Military Institute" or "Three Mile Island."

I don't need to tell you what TMI means now; every teenager knows. Yet it's a paradox: how can there be too much information when information is what we want, what we value, what we live for? We feel deluged -- unable to process it all, unable to find knowledge.

And so, while I've not read the book, you can see that there is a difference between information and knowledge.

Schools are really great about pushing information. But where does knowledge come into play? If if there is knowledge, is there also a thing we might aspire to that has been called wisdom? Information can be easily quantified and measured. We make the hollow attempt to do the same thing with knowledge, but wisdom only becomes apparent in the long term. There is no direct scale for its measure.

The other day I did a post, Hold with one hand and slice carefully with the other, which is not just about the hands. In fact the brain is also divided left and right but cross laterally, so the right brain controls the left hand and vice versa. And so, while it is popular to think of ourselves as right or left brained, they do work in tandem. I had done an even earlier post about bird brains which can be found here, and which may help you to better understand the essential relationship between left and right. It may also help provide some insight into the tsunami. How can we be so terrified, and yet so enthralled with nature's power?

Schools do a very poor job of integrating left and right. Students have bodies that also long to be educated. They have creative, investigatory spirits that long to be set loose on the world, rather than restrained in deluge of TMI. Early educators saw the need to educate the whole child. But it is hard to measure the whole child. We can place performance marks on a wall, and we can compare those makings over the course of our children's lifetimes. But there are things beyond measure that are even more important to our children's success, and we forget that our teachers are teaching those things as well.

Make, fix and create. Just as these things will take both hands, they also require both hemispheres of the brain. By turning our schools into workshops and laboratories, we restore their spirit.

the importance of failure and of being wrong

If you have spent any time in the wood shop, you've learned a few things. First, mistakes will undermine your self-esteem if you don't learn to make the best of them. If you've survived your first few weeks trying to make a few things, you've probably learned that we learn best by making a few mistakes along with whatever success we can garner from our experience. It is humbling, which is why some say that woodworking builds character. It is pretty dang hard for your successes to go to your head, without having first developed the art of self-forgiveness for all those other things that don't quite work out. You begin to realize that everything that is, is a mistake, regardless of how successful it may appear at the moment, because something new and improved is streaming down the pike, enhanced by what someone learned by screwing up, reviewing and redoing what they'd done.

So you begin to get a heads up that when things go wrong, your mistakes are giving you the heads up for what comes next, and providing the information as to how to move in that new direction. Get it? If not, boy have I got the book for you. Author Alina Tugend explores the value of making mistakes and of being wrong in her book, Better by Mistake: the unexpected benefits of being wrong. The bad thing is that our culture thinks that being wrong is a bad thing. And so people are inclined to cover up or hide their mistakes and thus allow them to become large and dangerous, like the design of nuclear power plants and the failure to adequately assess the related danger of earthquake and tsunami. You learn in the wood shop that you need to be prepared with a plan b, and you learn that when you make a mistake, you back up, assess and find a better way and you learn to celebrate your failures as the pathway to even greater success. I know my wood working readers have experiences to share on this subject. Fess up. Use the comments function below. Share the power of oops. Then...

Make, fix and create...

wisdom of the body

I am at the point now of hinging and assembling the inlaid boxes I am working on in the shop. Making boxes has become such a refined process in my shop, with each process so well rehearsed, that I take comfort in the routine. I am working on 40 boxes at one time, and It is nice to know from my years of making these things that they will be sold and find homes where they will be enjoyed. The making of things over and over again is similar to what a musician does to prepare for a performance. One of the challenges in school is that of helping students to get over the "been there, done that" expectation that everything must be new. Some things we do over and over to get right, and then when we get them right, we attempt to reside at that level of work until the next step in our growth becomes obvious.

NPR's program Performance Today has been featuring a series on the Art of Practice, which can be found on the Performance Today Website, and the interviews with musicians about their practice can be found in a column at right on the website.

We hear remarkable performances on Performance Today, but so much of a musician's time is spent off-stage, doing something dramatically less glamorous: practicing.

The process of doing something over and over again with an aim toward growth, adds rhythm to a person's life, whether you are a musician or not.

This morning I had an interview with a reporter from the New York Times wanting to know about woodworking with kids. The article should come out in the Home Section of the New York Times on March 31. There are many things about kids' woodworking that most in the US do not know. One thing may be of particular interest to New Yorkers. The most prestigious university for teachers in the US, Teachers College at Columbia University, was founded to teach teachers how to teach woodworking to kids, as woodworking in schools was seen as a means through which to build intelligence and character in all children. But it seems that since that time, we've forgotten the important role of the hands in learning.

The New York Times reporter asked about the origins of the name of my program the Wisdom of the Hands. I explained that it came from a 2000 Stanley Kunitz interview on NPR when he had been named Poet Laureate of the United States. Kunitz had made comment during the interview that poems are "born of the wisdom of the body." I must inform my readers that intelligence is also. The hands are the primary source of human wisdom and what they create is the expression of human intelligence. We have created schools in which we treat the body as an inconvenience, but we had best begin remaking schools and schooling to utilize the ways in which engagement of the body mobilizes the whole child as learner. Woodworking is one way to re-engage the body, as it engages all the senses. One would not think that to be a matter difficult for anyone to grasp, but then of course these days some may be completely out of touch.

This article, Keys To Finnish Educational Success: Intensive Teacher-Training, Union Collaboration investigates Finnish teacher training and why their schools lead the world in effective education. The following is from Henna Virunnen, Finland's Minister of Education:

Our teachers are really good. One of the main reasons they are so good is because the teaching profession is one of the most famous careers in Finland, so young people want to become teachers. In Finland, we think that teachers are key for the future and it's a very important profession -- and that's why all of the young, talented people want to become teachers. All of the teacher-training is run by universities in Finland and all students do a five-year master's degree. Because they are studying at the university, teacher education is research-based. Students have a lot of supervised teacher-training during their studies. We have something called "training schools" -- normally next to universities -- where the student teaches and gets feedback from a trained supervisor.

Teachers in Finland can choose their own teaching methods and materials. They are experts of their own work and they test their own pupils. I think this is also one of the reasons why teaching is such an attractive profession in Finland because teachers are working like academic experts with their own pupils in schools.

Finland was the original home of educational sloyd, and students begin woodworking in Kindergarten. How do I know that? I visited the wood shop in the University of Helsinki where kindergarten teachers are trained. Finnish students begin reading at age 8 and surpass American students in 37% less time, while learning two national languages and English. Rather than trying to test their way to success, the educational system gives the teachers training and trust, and they rise to do their best.

Just in case you think I goof off during the day, I've posted a photo above of the boxes I've assembled . Next comes sanding, routing, more sanding and then finish.

Make, fix and create...

technology and intelligence

Via the Washington Post:

More than three-quarters of the nation’s public schools could soon be labeled "failing" under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, the Obama administration said Wednesday as it increased efforts to revamp the signature education initiative of President George W. Bush.

The projection from Education Secretary Arne Duncan amounted to a declaration that the school-ratings revolution Bush began nearly 10 years ago is itself in jeopardy because the law has become unworkable. President Obama is pushing to loosen accountability rules for most schools but crack down harder on the worst.

In other words the strategy of standardized testing our way toward school supremacy is a complete disaster by its own measure.

In the meantime, this article is interesting Is Your Baby Computer-Savvy? 80 Percent Are! Then, as a point of further reference, do some of my readers remember the article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" by Nicholas Carr? If the thrust of technology were to make us really as smart as we think we are when using technology, wouldn't we expect kids, starting on the internet at ages 0-5 in such numbers to be measurably smart in schools? Perhaps Carr is right. Internet technology is not making us as smart as we think we are.

I continue to monitor the unfolding tragedy in Japan with a very heavy heart. Today in the wood shop, I'll continue making small boxes. I have a conversation in the afternoon to launch the production of a Small Cabinet Making DVD, and then I need to work on being ready for classes on Monday when the students return from spring break. It is a busy life. I make lots of mistakes. In the wood shop, small errors are often compounded into larger ones, and I learn that my own faulty judgments about the fit of things, and the potential failure of things is human nature. When we, as a nation, or a culture, attempt to do far greater things and more dangerous things without the accompanying remembrance of all the things that can go wrong, we live in arrogance that leads to inevitable disaster. Today, there are brave men in Japan, forming a low-tech line of fire hoses, having taken matters of the meltdown into their own brave hands. My own prayers are in honor of their courage and sacrifice.

The term "sustainable development" came from the UN's Bruntlandt Commission of 1987 and was stated as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Years ago, people asked me why I chose not to use imported exotic woods. It was because I could not watch them grow and thereby be assured of their future. We must get to the point from which those who consume also make what they consume from renewable resources about which we can be completely assured the use of which will not deprive future generations of their use. With that be painful? Can it be more painful than what the Japanese people already face? Will it require change? Yes. But the changes which will be required are those which build community and create lives of deeper meaning.

Make, fix and create.... get in touch with your own sustaining power.

Personalized learning...

The following is from an article in Education Week: Schools Use Digital Tools to Customize Education by Michelle R. Davis

In today’s digital marketplace, students of all ages can create experiences tailored just for them. When a teenager searches for movies to watch, an online film site can provide suggestions based on past viewing history. Music lovers can create personalized playlists for everything from a workout in the gym to a study session. And when children play video games, they can choose a variety paths—based on their interests and skill levels—toward slaying a dragon or defeating an enemy.

Then many of these same students walk into their classrooms and sit at their desks to absorb one-size-fits-all lessons or, if they’re lucky, instruction aimed at the high-, mid-, or low-level learner. And in many cases, there is little, if any, technology integrated into those lessons.

In some pockets around the country, though, educators and schools are turning to technology and different teaching and learning approaches to give students a personalized learning experience that mirrors the customized experiences they take for granted in their lives outside of school.

That is a pretty compelling image. Instead of children being bored in school, or lost in lessons over their heads, appropriate challenge is delivered at a pace consistent with the child's ability to learn. OK, I'm almost sold. Sounds great on paper.

It seems completely new technologies are most easily adopted by the young. Hand a child your new iPhone and he or she will know more about it in the next ten minutes than you might discover in the first hour. And so what relationship do teachers have in the new schooling? Is there a place for maturity, and long range view? Is there a place for beauty and skill? Will there be mentors showing what you can actually accomplish by directing the application of technology with depth of insight toward significant objectives? Maybe so, or at least we can hope. In the meantime it seems that many schools are trying to push older teachers out of the way to make room for a new generation of teachers more fluent in new technologies.

There are some rules based human procedures that can be easily and effectively applied through technology. It is faster for a computer to do algebra or calculus than for a human being to do so. A word processor can check your spelling as you type, correct your punctuation, and suggest alternate words and phrasing. An accountant in another country, speaking another native language can do your taxes just as effectively as one in the US because he or she would be following the same rules and inputting the data in the same form. But what part will creativity play in schooling?

I hope that as we continue our mindless rush into new technologies (that I am not opposed to) we remember a few things. First is that the hands, applied through lessons in real life offer greater meaning than just the eyes, ears and mind alone. Second, our children need to be exposed to a full range of tools, that allow them to bring their ideas into concrete reality and build on the foundation of human culture. And third, the development of technology is a vector, with each level built on the foundation of past technologies. To understand technology and its full effect and value requires that we understand the whole of it, from the most simple to complex. By understanding the hammer as well as the most fascinating new technology gives one power and control over our own shared destiny. With a simple tool like a hammer or screwdriver, a man or woman can express his or her mastery over technology even in the most desperate of situations.

If this subject in of interest to you, you might enjoy an earlier post, Preservation and transmission of human culture.

Steven, when he first came to woodshop asked me, "Don't you have a computer here? I'm really good at games, and wood shop is boring." I knew it wasn't really boring, but that it was difficult and new for him and required skills he did not have. Now, with greater confidence, he tells me, "Wood shop is my favorite thing in school." Otto Salomon said that in the education of the child, we need to start with the known and move to the unknown. Salomon began sloyd lessons with the knife, as Swedish children already knew how to use knives without injuring themselves. It may get to the point in American education that we will need to start with the computer because that is what is already known to kids. What bizarre twist of educational reality! It completely misses the other points in Sloyd education... move from the simple to the complex and from the concrete to the abstract. In the meantime,

Make, fix and create... We will never fully outgrow our need for reality.

Edo (1603-1868)

I have been reading Azby Brown's book Just Enough, lessons in living green from traditional Japan and I've also been glued to the news when I'm not in the wood shop. My own thoughts and prayers are with the Japanese people. We know that "things can get out of hand," which is a phrase we use to suggest that we no longer have human control. With the massive scale of the disaster compounded by the out-of-control nuclear power plant, things are clearly out of hand. As we struggle to get a grip, is it too soon to draw what lessons we can from the experience of others to make our own lives richer, more secure, and more fulfilled?

The Edo period in Japan (1603-1868) was noted as a period of order, marked by excellence in arts and crafts, and environmental sustainability. The period was preceded by one of environmental collapse, and followed by the age of industrialization leading to Japan's role in WWII. Azby's book takes a look at that period to discover means through which we might reshape our own culture to become more sustainable and meaningful.

In Azby's introduction he makes reference to a classic, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if people mattered, by E. F. Schumaker:

Instead of assuming that someone who consumes more is necessarily better off than one who consumes less, "since consumption is merely means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption."

I would add that if consumption is a means to human well-being, then making, fixing and creating are even more.

I am convinced that the richer, more fulfilled and secure life we might seek for ourselves and hope for others would have something to do with our hands. If we were makers rather than merely consumers, how would that affect our lives? Your thoughts?

My own are simple: make, fix and create.

John Grossbohlin sent a link to an editorial in the New York Times, Let Kids Rule the School and Randall Henson sent a link to a boat builder, Douglas Brooks who is helping to preserve traditional Japanese boat building techniques. It seems all the information about Wisdom of the Hands is out there, but too few are willing to take the chance to do anything about it.

This afternoon, I am engaged in my friendly competition with the Chinese, by making wooden boxes.

dry stone walling

This video is from Mark Thomson, Institute of Back Yard Studies, In Australia. The best course of action in response to disaster is to prepare our own skills and creative imagination, that we might be better able to see it coming, and be prepared to be of help when it arrives. Make, fix, grow, learn. These are the natural inclinations upon which human culture and economy reside. My own heart goes out to the people of Japan, and my thoughts are drawn to their plight. We live in an interdependent world. No man is an island unto himself.
Make, fix and create.

making a dovetail marking template

I am planning to have my students do a unit in box making, so I am preparing the tools needed. The first thing is a simple jig for marking out dovetail pins as shown in the drawing above. The steps in making this are shown in the series of photos below.

Tilt the sawblade to 8 degrees and cut the dovetail shape.

Return the blade to 90 degrees and remove the stock between the angled cuts

Make a cut with the blade height set at 3/8 in.

Set the fence 1/8 in. from the blade and rip to finish forming the template.

hold with one and slice carefully with the other

I have been reading Jerome Bruner's book of essays, On Knowing, Essays for the Left Hand. The following is from his introduction:

Since childhood, I have been enchanted by the fact and the symbolism of the right hand and the left—the one the doer, the other the dreamer. The right is order and lawfulness. le droit. Its beauties are those of geometry and taut implication. Reaching for knowledge with the right hand is science. Yet to say only that much of science is to overlook one of its excitements, for the great hypotheses of science are gifts carried in the left hand.

Of the left hand we say that it is awkward and, while it has been proposed that art students can seduce their proper hand to more expressiveness by drawing first with the left, we nonetheless suspect this function. The French speak of the illegitimate descendant as being à main gauche, and, though the heart is virtually at the center of the thoracic cavity, we listen for it on the left. Sentiment, intuition, bastardy. And should we say that reaching for knowledge with the left hand is art? Again it is not enough, for as surely as the recital of a daydream differs from the well-wrought tale, there is a barrier between undisciplined fantasy and art. To climb the barrier requires a right hand adept at technique and artifice.

Jerome Bruner sent me an unpublished poem he had written.

Let us honor if we must
The right hand's well constructed thrust,
Though note ye well, lest you be cleft,
By surprises kindled from the left.

I asked Dr. Bruner if it was about boxing, but it was actually inspired by a poem about death by W. H. Auden which if you think about it is exactly backwards from what happens in the ring.

Let us honor if we can
The vertical man,
Though we honor none
But the horizontal one

I have been having a difficult time knowing what to say in the blog as we witness such devastation in Japan. What can I say? With the right hand view of things, we create order. From the left, comes the sucker punch. Some are left standing while thousands have been laid flat. It takes time to process it all. How can we get a grip? And how can we find meaning in such tragic events.

There is reason to think of the hands as being in paired team, left and right, that they are not separate in function. One hand holds while the other slices. To think the right hand has things covered on its own is a mistake. In all this there are things to do, that give real help and prepare for greater service. It might seem trivial and meaningless to some in light of the scale of the tragedy in Japan, but many American's are making paper cranes as a way of coping with their own sense of grief over the disaster.

Perhaps in some small way, the project may help people of Japan to know that they are not alone. And some of those who feel powerless, may at least find some small sense of control in what happens through their own hands.

In the Carrol County News this week, there was an article about a great program integrating construction arts and math called, If I had a Hammer, in which children get their first real taste of doing something real with tools with the promise to school administrators that it builds math skills. Some administrators might not see the value of making standing on its own and need the math rationale to see the use of it. But all math aside, the experience of having hammer in one hand and nail in the other is an essential building block for those who would be of service in coping with disaster, which is what we've made of American education by neglecting the hands. Watch out for what Bruner calls "surprises kindled on the left." Make sure your left hand knows what your right hand is doing, and vice versa. Make, fix, and create.

this morning

It is bright and beautiful this morning in Arkansas, and I was informed that I needed one more photograph for the book, a tool cabinet variation fitted out with a variety of tools.  You can see the results in the photo at left.

sculpture

Last night we had a very successful art auction fund raiser for the Clear Spring School, so we are all pleased with the community support. As usual, it was a wonderful event with fine foods, and beautiful donated work and a wide variety of choices to bid upon. My walnut hall table garnered one of the highest bids, so I was particularly pleased to see it raise money for the school.

Today, I continue to work on a grant proposal for the Wisdom of the Hands, and I'm finishing the sculpture I'd started as a restful break in celebration of completing my book, Making Small Cabinets. In making sculpture, unlike my cabinet making, there are few absolute precision cuts. What you do is what you get, and if what you've done reveals something of the wonder and beauty of the natural world, and in some small way opens an eye or two to look and see things differently, the work is complete. This first piece shown above is tentatively titled, "no, not Noguchi." Below you will find "twisted" and "torn." When I sell a piece, I'll find justification to make more.

I have been watching a bit of the tsunami/earthquake destruction in Japan, and reading Azby Brown's book Just Enough. The video images from Japan are frightening. The order and sensibility of earlier times presented by Azby's book is a stark contrast to complete chaos. Somewhere between the images and imagination, we will find hope for all those affected by this tragedy.

Make, fix and create. It is great practice for whatever comes next.

a proposal for the arts....

My regular readers may just skip over this as there is nothing new, but I am working on a proposal for funding and I am gathering my thoughts. Or, if you like, you may comment below and add to my reflections on this issue. You may be able to add the necessary component to fine-tune my proposal.

Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Anaxagoras said that man is the wisest of all animals because he has hands. More recently mathematician and scientific historian Jacob Bronowski had said, "the hands are the cutting edge of mind." And so we wonder, can the hands also be the cutting edge of education and the leading edge of educational reform? How can we actually get a grip on the educational problems we face? Can it be that the hands provide the elusive handle on necessary reform?

We started the Wisdom of the Hands program at Clear Spring School in September 2001 with the intent of proving the value of woodworking education as a component in an integrated curriculum. From that point, as a high school only program, we were led to start woodworking in the lower grades as a way of strategic implementation of the hands, based on the idea of early educational theorists, that the use of the hands was essential to the full development of mind. Since 2003 we have had wood shop in all grades from 1 though 12 as a means of purposefully engaging the hands of children in learning math, science, art, music, geography, history and literature.

In 2005, inspired by the successful integration and effectiveness of the Wisdom of the Hands program the Board of Clear Spring School changed the mission statement to read as follows: Together, all at Clear Spring School promote a lifelong love of learning through a hands-on and hearts-engaged educational environment. Based on that mission, the curriculum and methods in use at Clear Spring School have been refocused on the purposeful integration of our children's hands in all classes and subjects to bring more effective learning.

Those of us engaged in the arts understand the role of the hands in our own learning. We know that we learn more enthusiastically, more effectively, and to greater lasting effect when we learn hands on. This is known and widely accepted throughout the arts community, and widely ignored in modern American education. It is even worse in the schools most at risk. Overall, between 1982 and 2008, students having received arts education dropped from 65 percent to 50 percent, with the decline being even more severe for minority students, blacks and Latinos.

And so, how do we bridge the gap and break the barriers preventing the vast field of American educators from grasping the strategic value of the hands?

Now with 5 years of purposeful integration of the hands in practice throughout the Clear Spring School, in all subjects and all grade levels, the challenge becomes one of speaking the language of other educators, and to a larger audience, outside the arts, crafts and music disciplines. And so, how do we do that?

The primary means through which educators view learning and school performance is through standardized testing. As unfortunate as that may be, testing will likely be a necessary part of the dialog that will be required to bring the value of hands-on learning to the attention of a larger audience. We are seeking support to measure our children's performance against others, but with other vital measures included: qualities of character and intelligence that are most often ignored in normal standardized testing, but are essential to children's later long term success. These are the important measurable matters of social adjustment, interpersonal problem solving, cooperative and creative problem solving, curiosity, and educational enthusiasm. In these particular areas, we feel that hands-on learning stacks up to our distinct advantage. It is what we see everyday and want to share with the world for the sake of all our children.

significant decline in arts education.

My readers may wonder how severe the decline in arts education has been. This article provides statistics on the decline: Arts Education for Minority Children Drops
By Erik W. Robelen

Math, and reading are important subjects, but it seems some educators don't understand that the arts are often what motivate students to have interest in the core subjects and often stimulate their interest in being in school in the first place.

Tell those who have no interest in the arts to get out of the way and lets the arts help fix American education. Please forgive me for being rude, but number crunchers have made a mess of things and should be sent to the corner and be provided with dunce caps. Is that an extreme thing to suggest? Perhaps it is just my own exaggerated reaction what has gone on too long in American education. Persons with hand skills have been marginalized whereas all of the early educational theorists knew the value of hands-on learning. The hands after all, are the cutting edge of the mind, and the arts are the best ways to purposefully engage the hands in learning.

Make fix and create.

I will be at home for the day, finishing the three pieces of sculpture I've been working on, and installing interior trim on windows we've had replaced in our home. I will also be reviewing finished chapters of my new book, Making Small Cabinets.

Tonight is our annual Clear Spring School benefit auction, and I've donated a walnut hall table from my torii series to be sold to the highest bidder.

a cooperative view of intelligence

Einstein said, "my pencil and I are smarter than I am." And in that simple phrase, we see illuminated the foolishness of excessive reliance on standardized testing. We think that intelligence resides in our heads, but it actually lies within our social relationships and is embodied in the tools we use. Recent research on elephants confirms they are smarter than some would think they are, and also illustrates one particular failing of our own excessive dependence on standardized testing in American education. According to the article, Elephants Ace Intelligence Test,

Elephants recently tested for their intelligence and ability to work with others, astounded scientists with their aptitude to learn and solve problems.

Two of them even outsmarted the scientists who developed the test.

Do we ever test students in cooperative problem solving? And if not, why not? We test instead for those things which are most easily measured and quantified... not for those things which our students most need for their future success. Student ability to engage in cooperative problem solving is the most essential quality for their success in the work place. But we arrange schooling as competitive rather than cooperative. We separate those who are mechanically inclined from those who have no mechanical insight. We separate those who are interested in math from those whose interests are literary or scientific, and in essence we take away the "pencils" upon which our children's futures depend.

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop, first, second and third grade students finished their dinosaur making project. For those who were already finished dinosaurs last week, we had "design your own dinosaur day." I had made a prototype which you can see in the photo below which I called a "dougasaurus." Can't we see why working together with real tools to solve problems through creative engagement is the most important thing we can experience in school? Our choice is either duh, or make fix and create.

will machines save us?

I enjoy talking with my young wood working scholars as they work. This morning we started a project in which students in the 7th and 8th grades will make their own t-squares and then do some simple drafting. I want them to begin to become familiar with technical drawing as one more means of personal and creative expression and communication. And so as we were finishing work, Wyatt told me that now we have things easy and have become lazy, and that's OK... He said that machines are designed to make things easier for us. Obvious, right? I wasn't prepared for what came next. His expectation is that they will continue to do so. And I have been on the earth long enough to know not to be quite so optimistic. As a woodworker, I've learned that not everything goes just as planned or as hoped.

A well earned skepticism leads one to BE READY with PLAN B.

Is there some benevolent intent in the design of labor saving machinery? Do the makers of such things intend that our lives be made easy, and if so, how will they extract payment for their efforts and what value will we extract from the loss of skill and the descent into laziness? Can that journey be taken at no risk? One thing we know about smart tools is that they have no care or regard for the person given the task of operating them. Machines have no care about the personal characteristics of their operators. Give a man a simple tool like a saw or hammer, and he will have some autonomy in how the tool is used. Whether he hits the nail and whether the nail finds home in one strike or a series of blows or bends flat and requires extraction is subject to his skill in the use of the tool and the benevolence of his intent. As tools become more complicated, the level of human autonomy is decreased and the operator becomes less an agent of free will and more subject to the control by those who own the machines. And so what is so deeply disturbing to me about the optimistic assessment of our relationship to ever decreasing skill and ever increasing complication in our tools? Can you see and bear witness to the loss of human autonomy and decline of democratic values?

In contrast to all this, I've been reading Azby Brown's book, Just Enough, about sustainable living practices in early Japan. Azby notes,

"Is sustainable life worth the effort? The problem is that none of us has ever lived in a sustainable society so it is hard to imagine what it will be like."

But it is important that we think about how we can live more harmoniously with the earth, and its no longer so seemingly abundant resources. This book, Just Enough, is a new favorite book. The thoughtful illustrations make me think of the Whole Earth Catalog. Each page offers material demanding reflection. And it is important that, as we move into a renewed view of responsible craftsmanship, that we have some examples to observe and reflect upon. Azby presents one in a lovely book.

Make, fix and create.

Made in America?

ABC television has done a series on American manufacturing that is discussed in this article MIA: Made in America or Missing in Action? It can be a tough choice if you are poor in America, whether to buy something from China, far cheaper relative to American goods, or something better crafted to last generations made by an American... Let me correct that. There actually is no choice for some or for most. And of course, we know that the better choice is not to buy at all, but to make, make do, fix up old, and to invest thereby in the development of skill.

Buy something and it will help to fill up your house. Buy something cheap and it will help to fill up your house with cheap meaningless stuff. Make something and you will develop skill and add to the cultural and economic strength of our nation.

It is interesting at this point, that consumers give very little thought to where things come from, or who made them, and my point is not to disparage Chinese made goods.

In the ABC TV show, Made in America, a family home was stripped of all those things that were not made in the USA, and the family found that their home was nearly bare. There is much that can be said for making things yourself, and for knowing who made the things that you did not. Each and every object can represent relationships with others who have grown in skill and craftsmanship due to your investment in them and their creative efforts. Those investments are the foundation of sustainable community. As we watch what some describe as decline in the US, we should at least be aware of its cause: carelessness, a cultural descent to the bottom line, in which people are far more concerned with getting by cheap than with building a community of craftsmen.

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop, the 4th, 5th and 6th grade students worked on looms as shown in the photo at left.

DIY, TIY. Make, fix and create...

first hand, second hand, 3rd opinion.

When we know something from our own experience it is known first hand. When we learn something as portrayed from the experience of another, we call it second hand. We know that second hand is subject to bias, misunderstanding, misinterpretation and deliberate distortion. That is why when someone is seeking a medical diagnosis, we look for a second or third opinion to make certain important medical decisions are based on true clarity.

Shortly after I had graduated from college, I attended a poetry recitation in Memphis, TN. A college professor had wanted me to pursue the poetry I had been writing for his class, and the idea of myself as a "poet" had not completely escaped my imaginations of self. The poetry reading did that for me. I listened politely as budding poets and their more experienced advocates told bleeding heart stories that were dredged from the experience of others. No first hand, real stuff in sight. From my own perspective, as one who likes reality, and truth, a poet needs to be engaged in real experiences of his or her own and poetry without those falls flat.

The following is from Charles H. Hamm, Mind and Hand, 1886:

"It is easy to juggle with words, to argue in a circle, to make the worse appear the better reason, and to reach false conclusions which wear a plausible aspect. But it is not so with things. If the cylinder is not tight, the steam engine is a lifeless mass of iron of no value whatever. A flaw in the wheel of the locomotive wrecks the train. Through a defective flue in the chimney the house is set on fire. A lie in the concrete is always hideous; like murder, it will out. Hence it is that the mind is liable to fall into grave errors until it is fortified by the wise counsel of the practical hand."

If you are a regular reader, forgive me for repeating, but the human hand is constantly seeking the truth and thereby finding it.

We live in an age of exploding "journalism" with huge distortion of information and opinion. Where is the first hand? I have been brain storming an idea. What if those who wrote books were to print them (on letterpress) and bind them themselves? The process would be concurrent so that the hand and press might give shape and cogency to the language used. Can you see the potential for the enrichment of the whole of human culture? If you have been reading here for just a short time, you will know that the hands have left their mark on the entirety of human culture even though their labors have been denigrated and displaced from American education. We have thus become a nation of commonplace distortion and manipulations and we are missing the intelligence that arises from the hand's engagement in creative thought.

Let's reunite the hands with learning, so that what our children know will be connected first hand. Make, fix and create.

Homer Lane and sloyd

A reader mentioned that his research indicated that Homer Lane had attended sloyd teacher training in Boston and had taught sloyd before working with penal reform in Detroit and founding the Little Commonwealth School in the UK.  He was described by A.S. Neill as being the primary inspiration for Summerhill. These may present interesting areas for reader investigation.

The idea that engagement in crafts was essential to the full development of character was widespread amongst the proponents of manual arts. Dr. Georg Kerschensteiner, superintendent of schools in Munich, Germany said:

"We might say, that the useful man must be the predecessor of the ideal man. Everyone must be able to do some good and thorough work though it be of the simplest kind, of one sort or another. Not till then will he be able to only to satisfy his fellowmen and be of use to his country, but also to make his own life of value to himself. And in the same measure as our lives gain value for ourselves do we attain power to reach a higher stage of culture."

Quite sadly, there are seem to be few educators currently in the US who seem to understand this.

Diane Ravitch was John Stewart's guest on Friday, March 4. It should be watched by everyone interested in the ongoing debate about American education. Stewart's comments prior to the following interview are very much on the mark and the full episode can be viewed through the link above.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

In the meantime, Make, fix and create.

American Swedish Institute

Now that my seventh book is in the hands of the publisher for completion and printing, I get to play in the wood shop with sculpture. I am continuing a series, with this one being tentatively called, ripped, or twisted and torn. The base is cherry and the sculpture, ash.

The American Swedish Institute is starting A Year of Swedish Slöjd: Handcraft Workshops for Youth and Adults. The first sloyd teacher in the US had taught in Minnesota in a church basement, and the important point about sloyd was not only the useful and beautiful objects made, but the growth of intelligence and character the practice was known to foster in children and adults.

The first sloyd teacher in America was Lars Erikson, editor of a Swedish paper called Slojdaren in Sweden. John M. Ordway of MIT had visited in Sweden to observe the Sloyd method and persuaded Erikson to come to the USA as described by Charles Bennett,

"On December 8, 1884, in the basement of the Augustana Lutheran Church of that city (Minneapolis) Erikson began teaching a class in Swedish sloyd. This is supposed to be the first lesson in Swedish sloyd taught in America."

Time magazine this week wonders whether we are a nation in decline, and I can suggest that the beginning of decline was when the powers that be decided that to not be a nation of makers, and to not be a nation of skilled craftsmen would be OK. Throughout the previous administration, we watched our young men go to unnecessary war in Iraq, while almost all our necessary and unnecessary consumer objects were purchased from China. American politicians, being completely out of touch, decided that was just fine. They did not lift a finger (as they knew not how to do so), but rather continued closing the last shop classes in American education.

Reader Reuben sent a link to an article describing the continued growth of the Chinese manufacturing sector. Good Luck Competing Against Chinese Labor Costs Mfg. Job Growth In China Is Headed Up, Not Down; 109 Million Mfg. Workers In China Dwarfs Number In U.S. But my point isn't that of trying to compete with the Chinese, but to improve the qualities of our own lives. To live without creative capacity is tragic.

There are things that each of us can do to remedy our national plight.

"Handwork, such as can only be learned in its own narrow field, must precede all life, all action, all art. To know one thing well and to practice it, gives more culture than a half-knowledge of a hundred things. -- Goethe"

Make, fix and create. DIY, TIY.

what it means to teach

One of the great advantages of having a blended school, grades 1 through 12 on the same campus, and preschoolers nearby is that the situation presents opportunities for the older children to take on teaching responsibilities. In chemistry, that means that the students prepare demonstrations for the lower classes. As David notes in a comment below, he and others (and perhaps we all) "learn the fullest by teaching others." Just in case any of you wonder how I became a competent woodworker, I can assure you that it wasn't only by hanging out alone in the wood shop.

One of the techniques used at Clear Spring School to increase interest in reading among those lacking in reading confidence is to have them read to younger children. It allows them to return to practicing on easier materials, to gain greater confidence and reading competence, while also setting an example for the children in the lower grades.

Through all of this inter-grade interaction, the Clear Spring School campus becomes much more like a family than a school.

A reader asked about giving support to Clear Spring School. The school gets no tax dollars, has a tuition rate far lower than other NAIS accredited schools, and is therefore very dependent on an active fund raising program. In other words, you can help. Checks can be sent to :

Clear Spring School
PO Box 511
Eureka Springs, AR 72632

If you want to direct your donation to my program in the wood shop, write WOH or wisdom of the hands in the memo space. All donations to Clear Spring School are tax deductible and will support hands-on learning.

DIY, TIY, make, fix and create. By teaching what you learn, you will learn what you learn at its fullest and deepest levels.
Bill Forrest sent in the following link which my readers may enjoy: Planting Seeds.

some things you have to see for yourself

As we all know, there is a difference between knowing something "as it was presented" and knowing something "first hand" in which the experience is our own. That is the cutting edge between real learning and the schooling we settle for in American education. The same thing is true for creating an understanding of what I have come to know as the experience of Clear Spring School. In order to really get it, one needs the experience of being there, and even I, who should be used to it by now, tend to be affected by the overwhelming gentleness of it all.

Every few years we go through the process of re-accreditation with ISACS, the Independent Schools of the Central States, part of NAIS,  the National Association of Independent Schools. The process requires an examination of our school, from the very top, to the very bottom, and it's a lengthy one, requiring three years, start to finish. So it seems that just when we get done and have a breathing spell, we are at it again, making sure that Clear Spring School measures up, is true to its mission, and is the best that we can be. That process begins with an examination of the mission statement, the vision and the philosophy of the school.

As long as I've been associated with Clear Spring School, we have talked about "the Clear Spring Way" which is a catch phrase that covers many of those things which we assume visitors, students and staff, can see or experience for themselves. We know it includes both an academic component and one that involves character. We are discussing it among teachers and students in order to nail down exactly what it means. It will be interesting to hear from many of the students what they think of as "the Clear Spring Way." If you visit the campus, you will see evidence that something is different. You will see the children all playing together, in all grades. You will see special bonds of affection and trust formed between first graders and students in high school. You will see interpersonal problems solved without intervention, and you will see self-motivated educational enthusiasm at all levels.

In the photo at left, as we observed a high school chemistry experiment, you can see curious 2nd grade students looking on. After a time, other lower elementary school children had gathered in to nest in laps of some of the high school girls, a common thing at CSS, where age rarely gets in the way of learning. The high school students often present their chemistry findings to the scholars in the lower grades.

And so I can do my best to describe that for you. But there are some things you would have to see for yourself. When the hands-on connection is made, learning is at its deepest level, greater educational enthusiasm is brought to bear, and what you learn sticks like glue.  DIY and teach it yourself, too. Your own children are likely missing something very important, their creative problem solving capacity. Make, fix and create.

more dinosaurs...

Today in the Clear Spring School wood shop, first, second and third grade students worked on more dinosaurs, as shown at left. We've saved the most difficult for last and will finish the dinosaur studies next week. I had a bit of a problem in class today with students wanting materials to take home and continue crafting objects on their own of their own design. I am so pleased that they have such enthusiasm, but we had to have a meeting at school to talk about it, as pieces of wood left on campus can be a hazard and distraction. Years ago when we started the Wisdom of the Hands program at Clear Spring School, we did not know that we would launch such enthusiastic making.

I managed to be on the Clear Spring School campus in time to observe a bit of what high school science teacher Pete Golden calls science on a shoestring. He and his chemistry class have been on a mission to melt lithium to form an ingot. It is a challenge because it burns in the presence of water vapor, or oxygen. In the photo below, they used a burning candle to remove oxygen from the air, and used a desiccant pack to remove water vapor from the jar. The magnifying glass is being used to focus the suns rays directly on the lithium film inside the aluminum lined crucible. While the experiment did not lead to successful results, it leads to enthusiastic successful learning. It is all part of what we do at Clear Spring School. Hands-on, hearts engaged is not just for the wood shop. Make, fix and create.

Tom Reed has made a youtube video tribute to Otto Salomon which you can see below:

Prisoners, untie your hands.

As often happens, I spent some time in the night reflecting on our American educational experience. I've been reading an autobiography of the thoughts of Jerome Bruner, educational psychologist, and my interest in Plato's prisoners in a cave allegory comes from his having mentioned it three times in the course of the book.

The allegory presented to Bruner a powerful reflection that seems to have nagged a bit at the edges of his life. He didn't tell much about it in the book as it would be assumed that his academic audience would already be familiar with the story.  After all, it was once common for most academicians to be trained in the classics. It seems that now as we have our eyes glued to the screen, watching images projected for our entertainment, and the control of our perceptions, we have become even more prisoners in the cave than perhaps men were in Plato's time. And then look at school. Prisoners pass through the cave to take their places in the parade of shadows to control others.

If you want to provide for escape, the first thing is to untie the prisoners' hands, that they may release themselves to become further unbound.

Today the 7th and 8th grade students finished their travel journals and the 9th grade students did woodturning. After school I finished my chair for the ESSA ReArt Auction as shown in the photo above.

Make, fix and create.

Plato's men in a cave

Plato used an allegory to describe our human state, and to describe how we learn, and how we are manipulated to learn,  (or not learn) that scholars have called, "Plato's prisoners in a cave." He believed that the true purpose of education should be that of liberation of society from its delusions, that each, including the lowest among us, might live in the light rather than controlled darkness.

I am curious what other blog readers think this story tells us about education. It has been interpreted differently by different scholars depending on the points they wish to make. A tradesman might see another story.

One of the things I find interesting in Plato's allegory is that it illustrates how things can be seen differently from differing points of view, and one of the problems in American education is that we have divided education along class lines, of either the trades or academic advancement, whereas most early educators believed that all, even those of the highest academic advancement should learn trades fro the skill and character they impart. In light of this read Socrates dialog with Glaucon as follows:

[Socrates] Then, I said, the business of us who are the founders of the State will be to compel the best minds to attain that knowledge which we have already shown to be the greatest of all-they must continue to ascend until they arrive at the good; but when they have ascended and seen enough we must not allow them to do as they do now.
[Glaucon] What do you mean?
[Socrates] I mean that they remain in the upper world: but this must not be allowed; they must be made to descend again among the prisoners in the cave, and partake of their labors and honors, whether they are worth having or not.
[Glaucon] But is not this unjust? he said; ought we to give them a worse life, when they might have a better?
[Socrates] You have again forgotten, my friend, I said, the intention of the legislator, who did not aim at making any one class in the State happy above the rest; the happiness was to be in the whole State, and he held the citizens together by persuasion and necessity, making them benefactors of the State, and therefore benefactors of one another; to this end he created them, not to please themselves, but to be his instruments in binding up the State.

Just open your eyes and look at the mess we have made of economy and culture by neglecting to reinforce each child's responsible, creative and productive inclinations.

You could look at Plato's allegory as being relevant to modern American society and politics. What do you think? Are there things we might learn from it? In the US, we have a huge number of people who are imprisoned by ignorance resulting from disinterest fostered by their schooling. Marching across the cave behind the wall, are those who attempt to control their thoughts.

Make, fix and create.

what is sloyd?

UK woodworker and blogger Robin Wood has an article on his blog, raising the question, "What is sloyd?" and he does an excellent job of answering his own question. Check it out. Read it. It is a great article. If you are looking for more reading material on sloyd, my articles written for Woodwork Magazine can be found Here.

fingerprints

What are fingerprints for? No, they are not just to tell one crook from another. The intricate whorls on each fingertip perform a very specific function according to this report from Discover Magazine. Fingerprints Are Tuned to Amplify Vibrations and Send Info to the Brain.

When a finger sweeps over a finely textured surface, such as a cotton sleeve or a wooden coffee table, the interaction sends a large range of vibrations into the skin. Specialized sensors called Pacinian fibers, the tips of nerve fibers, detect only a select few of the vibrations — those right around 250 hertz — before sending the signal to the brain, where the touch sensation is processed.

The intricate whorls on the tips of your fingers, not only engage with other textures as fingers slide over various textures, they amplify and filter the sensations to greatest efficiency and effect.

What other part of the human anatomy is arranged in similar ridges and whorls? Can you think of one? Can I be blunt? How about the human brain? Another one is hair. Some researchers have suggested that the direction of rotation of hair whorls on the human head is significant with regard to brain development. Who knows? The human body/mind is a complex mechanism that we still do not fully understand. And yet, we've constructed educational institutions that ignore much of what we do know.

For instance, that, "The hands are the cutting edge of the mind."-Jacob Bronowski
Make, fix, and create.

college or career? Why not both.

The report from Harvard challenging the notion that all kids should go to college is under assault by advocates for the disadvantaged according to this article in Education Week. College for All Confronted.

The authors contend that their vision would expand opportunity for all students, especially those who face the dimmest prospects now because their education stops at high school. Rather than derailing some students from higher learning, their system would actually open more of those pathways, they say, by offering sound college preparation and rigorous career-focused, real-world learning, and by defining clear routes from secondary school into certificate or college programs.

"Every high school graduate should find viable ways of pursuing both a career and a meaningful postsecondary degree or credential,” the report says. “For too many of our youth, we have treated preparing for college versus preparing for a career as mutually exclusive options.”

The opponents to the report are concerned with further disadvantage being placed on the poor and disadvantaged:

"They’re arguing for different standards and separate tracks,” said Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that focuses on policies to improve education for low-income students. “Every single time we create multiple tracks, we always send disproportionate numbers of poor kids and kids of color down the lesser one. Until we can find a way not to do that, then people like me will object.”

Mr. Schwartz of Harvard acknowledged that the report wades into “tricky terrain.” But he said that tracking is “when schools make decisions about what kids are capable of and what their futures are. It’s pervasive in our schools, and it’s a huge problem.

“But I wouldn’t confuse that form of tracking,” he said, “with trying to create a system in which by the time kids hit 16, they and their families have some real choices to make.”

Early manual training and Educational Sloyd proposed that craftsmanship practiced by all in schools would level the playing field and create a sense of the dignity of all labor, but their remedy was ignored, bringing us to our current state of educational disarray. David Henry Feldman had presented a new metaphor for education, "the child as craftsman" from which we can recognize the qualities of skill and character inherent in craftsmanship, that should be made available to all students of every social class, and race, regardless of academic potential, and that were offered to all students through Educational Sloyd.

If were were smart, we would ask every child to choose a trade as a cognitive supplement to academic advancement. Every cognitive leap involves metaphor and most essential successful creative metaphors are conceptualized from engagement in physical reality.

Don't expect scholars at Harvard or elsewhere to fully understand what you can only learn from your own hands. The Harvard report, Pathways to Prosperity can be downloaded here.

In the meantime, I'm keeping my hands smart by making a chair for a "chairity" event in support of the Eureka Springs School of the Arts. It is a quickie, made from old salvaged chair parts and a slab of spalted maple. The event is called "reArt" and with a few exceptions, the works are ones that have been passed along from collectors to be auctioned by the school to other collectors to raise money for the school. Five or six local artists have been selected to donate original work for the live auction. This chair fits the theme by reusing old parts. Some of the step by step photos are at left and more can be found in earlier posts. The chair back has been painted with green milk paint.


The "Watson" competitor on Jeopardy brings to mind an earlier post on the subject of distributed intelligence, What if we're not as smart as we think we are? What if intelligence has always been offloaded to the tools we use, and not necessarily invested only in what goes on inside our heads? If that is the case, (which it is) then we would be wanting to train our children in the use of all kinds of tools, thus enhancing their cognitive capacities.

make, fix and create.

The way to the brain

"The way to the brain, goes through the hand" was an expression common among Englishmen at Nääs one hundred and ten years ago according to Hans Thorbjörnsson, historian of the famous school for Sloyd teschers near Gothenburg, Sweden. I asked Hans to research the origins of the quote and he found that it was widely used and could not be attributed to a single man. I began trying to find that same expression on the internet to discover its actual origins, and found an almost identical expression stated as a principle of Montesorri schools. It is quoted in the prospectus of a new charter school being proposed in the Bronx, NYC.

“The way to the brain is through the hands.” This is borne out by the research of Piaget, which indicates that a child must interact with real objects, have time to investigate and test his ideas, and discuss his ideas with others in order to build satisfactory mental constructs. The Montessori approach uses a wide range of specially designed concrete materials that represent abstract concepts, particularly in math and language arts. This physical modeling fosters the internalization of accurate mental representations of these operations.

Maria Montessori founded her first school in 1907 and the American Montessori society was founded in 1960. You will note that use of that expression in relation to Sloyd came years before Maria Montessori's first school, and long before she became famous as an educator. So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Can it be that anyone looking at oneself, without the delusions imposed by academic predispositions might observe and state the nearly exact same thing? Or perhaps, Maria Montessori had drawn upon a wide range of sources in formulating her theories and methods, as we each do today.

Here are two more direct quotes from Maria Montessori telling us that she had a clear grasp. “The hands are the instruments of man’s intelligence,” and “The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself.” You can find these and a lot more here.

And so the question arises, can you examine your own learning experience and note the value of your hands in investigating and understanding material and cultural reality? I hope so. And then I also hope you will feel your way clear to do something about it. DIY, TIY

Make, fix and create.

In the meantime, the Providence, R.I. school board voted to send termination notices to every teacher in its many schools. No, it is not a joke. With the Republican conservatives in power and their "starve the beast" notions from the Reagan era that "no tax is a good tax," even if it supports education and fire protection, raising taxes to fix budgetary problems is not considered as a reasonable option. The same ideological infection is sweeping our nation, from Wisconsin south. Is it fair to say that we have become a nation of idiots? Heartless ones at that.

mind food...

This morning I have three small planes on my desk which must be packed up and returned to Fine Woodworking for photographs. I send them back with a sense of reluctance. I would keep them on my desk as food for thought if I could. They are beautifully crafted, a delight to hold, and they perform well the tasks for which they were designed. One must know that the designers and makers of these planes have taken great satisfaction in them.

I have little doubt that more of these will be bought than will be put to use. That seems to be the way with tools in the US. People collect them, while having too little opportunity to put them to use. But there could be worse things. I think that a person can get the same satisfaction and sense of physical power and control from handling a well crafted and finely tuned plane as from a finely made gun, but with some difference. The power of it is creative rather than destructive. And you can keep it on your desk instead of locked up. Meth addicts seldom break into homes to steal planes, and they won't be used by a family member to commit suicide.

This morning I'll have my first, second and third grade students back in the wood shop to work on dinosaurs. Some finished their long necks last week and want to make more. Wish me luck. They are a great bit of fun, but the process can be demanding. In the meantime, my daughter Lucy's EWB group project has been selected for broadcast on the PBS program Planet Forward. The program will be broadcast on April 8.

Some longnecks from this morning's class are shown in the photo above. Sherry Turkle, tomorrow's guest on Science Friday will discuss whether we have become too fond of technology at the cost of too little care for each other. It should be an interesting program as this link attests.
 

The photos below are testing the Veritas Detail Rabbet plane.

Make, fix and create

woodworking scholars

If you read yesterday's post quoting Otto Salomon, you may have noticed that he referred to students in sloyd as "scholars." As a part of general education, woodworking Sloyd was understood to be a significant contributory element to the growth and development of each and every child, and you can see how referring to students as "scholars," a term normally associated with academic learning would play a role in our understanding of wood shop. It would also delineate our expectations for what was to arise from it. This lesson was learned and taken to heart by some, and ignored by others who saw woodworking as being only of economic value, rather than a tool in the overall development of each child. This morning, as we watch continued democratic revolution in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and other African and Middle Eastern Nations, we need to also consider democracy in our own country. I will refer my readers to an earlier post concerning democracy and wood shop, containing comments by Charles B. Gilbert at the Eastern Manual Training Association meeting of 1905. A Passioned Plea. Mr. Charles B. Gilbert was one of those who had taken the lessons of Sloyd to heart. He was the Superintendent of Schools for Rochester, NY, and knew first hand, the value of woodworking education to all students.

"Democracy is not a form of government; it is a state of mind. It consists of a community of democratic people. The business of the schools is to train democratic people; and every teacher in every line of work should endeavor to bring up the boys and the girls to the feeling that they must be democratic--that they stand equal in opportunity and in obligation with all other boys and girls who are growing up."

In other words, when you use the schools to deliberately divide the students into two classes, "scholars" and trades, one destined to college and the other not, you have done irreparable harm, not only to the students but to society and the democratic principles we claim to hold dear.

If you want to do something about the Wisdom of the Hands, and restore our own society to democratic sensibility, please contact your own superintendent of schools and tell him (or her) she's been missing something very important. Perhaps Charles B. Gilbert could explain a few things to him/her.

The photos above show planes I reviewed today for Fine Woodworking and progress on a rustic chair made with old chair parts. The rustic chair will be given to a "chairity" auction to benefit the Eureka Springs School of the Arts.

Make, fix and create.